Commentators disagree about the extent to which Kant’s ethics is compatible with consequentialism. A question that has not yet been asked is whether Kant had a view of his own regarding the fundamental difference between his ethical theory and a broadly consequentialist one. In this paper I argue that Kant does have such a view. I illustrate this by discussing his response to a well-known objection to his moral theory, namely that Kant offers an implicitly consequentialist theory of moral appraisal. (...) This objection was most famously raised by Mill and Schopenhauer, but also during Kant’s time by Pistorius and Tittel. I show that Kant’s response to this objection in the second Critique illustrates that he sees the fundamental difference between his moral theory and a broadly consequentialist one to be one that concerns methodology. (shrink)

Kant’s chapter “On the Typic of the Pure Practical Power of Judgement” is one of the most obscure passages of the Critique of Practical Reason and it has often been regarded as a mere appendix. However, it deals with a fundamental question, namely, how can the pure practical law be applied to particular cases. In this paper, I would like to make an original contribution towards a better understanding of this chapter by comparing it to the Schematism chapter on the (...) basis of their analogical relation and suggesting how the reference to a sensus communis could help in solving the aim of the Typic chapter. (shrink)

I. Kant hat mit seiner universalistischen, formalistischen und kognitivistischen Konzeption moralisch-praktischer Gründe in Gegenüberstellung zu seiner instrumentalistischen Konzeption nicht-moralisch-praktischer Gründe eine Begrifflichkeit geschaffen, die es erlaubt, handlungsleitende Überzeugungen hinsichtlich ihres Geltungsanspruchs und ihrer Verbindlichkeit zu differenzieren. Von einem ‚Sollen‘ spricht Kant in beiden Fällen. Nicht nur der kategorische Imperativ, der unbedingt gebietet, „ich soll niemals anders verfahren als so, daß ich auch wollen könne, meine Maxime solle ein allgemeines Gesetz werden“ , sondern auch hypothetische Imperative, die bedingt gebieten, „ich soll (...) etwas thun, darum weil ich etwas anderes will“, nehmen bei Kant die normative Form eines ‚Sollens‘ an. In beiden Fällen ergehen also Forderungen an die Vernunft, doch es ist alles andere als klar, in welcher Beziehung diese Sollensformen zueinander stehen. Bestünde gar keine solche Beziehung, so träte praktische Vernunft im Plural auf – wohlgemerkt in einer einzigen Person, welcher sich der Sinn beider Imperativformen erschlossen hat. Da eine solche Form von Schizophrenie der Willensbestimmung nicht der Kantischen Vorstellung von praktischer Vernunft entspricht, stellt sich die Frage nach der Einheit von bedingtem und unbedingtem Sollen. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of Kant's categories of freedom, explaining how they fit together and what role they are supposed to play. My interpretation places particular emphasis on the structural features that the table of the categories of freedom shares with the table of judgements and the table of categories laid out by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. In this way we can identify two interpretative constraints, namely (i) that the categories falling under each heading must form (...) a synthetic unity whereby the third one derives from the combination of the other two. and (ii) that the first two categories falling under each heading must be morally undetermined and sensibly conditioned, while the third category is sensibly unconditioned and determined only by the moral law. (shrink)